Cool Cat Turnabout
by Sith Droideka
Summary: In the front room: a corpse. In the pool of blood: a Russian blue kitten without a name. In the fridge: another corpse. In the defendant's box: a man who won't be born for 28 years. Fun times are had by all.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Another Janaverse fic! And here I said I was working on Turnabout, I Do and Turnabout of the Night. I mean... I kind of was... and then I got sidetracked by some Brothers Karamazov crossdressing slash fanfiction... which I haven't even finished yet even though I want to finish it by the time my friend gets back from Russia... /sob**

 **Anyway, here you are! And this time, we have AN ACTUAL COURT CASE.**

 **By the way, it'd be a really good idea to head over to my profile and check out the other fics in my Janaverse series before you read this one.**

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 7:30 PM, Gavin Estate_

Valentine's day.

The very words can strike fear into the hearts of even the most stalwart men, assuming the word 'stalwart' here meant 'averse to going on dates'. Because going on dates was exactly what everyone was doing tonight. For example, Maria Fey-Armando and Ace Gumshoe were at that awful, overpriced "French" chain restaurant, Kristoph Gavin had gotten one of the numerous Feys to channel Dahlia Hawthorne, and Watson Justice was visiting someone in prison.

And Franziska von Karma and husband (that is, Klavier "Whipped" Gavin) were out at a significantly better French restaurant than the one previously mentioned. Leaving their kids - Jana and Alois, ages 15 and 17, respectively - home alone on the agreement that they wouldn't throw any parties, wouldn't order takeout on either parent's debit card, and would go to bed by eleven. Not that either child was the house party type.

Nonetheless, the doorbell was ringing.

"Who is that?" Jana said, putting down her PlayStation 23 controller.

"How am I supposed to know?" Alois said, immediately pulling the controller towards him with his foot and picking it up. "Go check the door."

"You do it."

"Ich glaube nicht."

Grumbling, Jana picked up her riding crop and walked over to the door as Alois started his turn on the game she had just been playing.

To her surprise, she found Miguel Fey-Armando holding a cat.

"Are you allowed to have cats?" he said instead of a greeting.

"Uh… Alois?"

Whether he was summoned by Jana calling him or the sound of Miguel's voice (or omnipresent smell of coffee), Jana wasn't sure, but Alois stuck his head into the entrance hallway a half-second later. "Ja?"

Miguel held up the cat in his arms a bit higher. "Kitten, kitten?"

Alois raised his eyebrows. "Wo… how long have you had that…?"

Miguel shrugged, scratching the little cat behind its ears. "Last week he was a stray on the side of the road, and this morning I found out that pets aren't _actually_ allowed at my apartment." He shoved the cat into Alois' arms. "I named him after you, kitten. Happy Valentine's day."

Alois blinked rapidly. "You named it Kitten?" Jana said, confused.

Miguel rolled his eyes. "I named it Alois, obviously."

"That could get confusing…"

"He's only called me anything other than 'kitten' maybe two times in my whole life," Alois mused, "so ich denke it wouldn't be confusing to Miguel." He blinked again. "His kitten is Alois and Alois is his kitten."

"Now you've got it," Miguel said with a brilliant, toothy grin.

"Is that all?"

"Yeah, pretty much. Have fun with Alois."

"…I cannot believe that you had nothing else to do on Valentine's day," Jana said, frowning. "You did not get a date?"

"Nope."

 _How?_ Jana screamed at the handsome prosecutor in her head, but wisely decided not to do it out loud.

"Anyway," Miguel said, half-turning around, "I'm going to go down to the movie theatre to pick up girls who got stood up by their dates tonight. See you, kitten, filly." He walked off, and Jana closed the door again, and turned to Alois the human, who was still holding Alois the kitten.

"I'm renaming it," Alois said immediately, holding it out at arms' length to get a closer look at it.

"Good," Jana said. She looked at the door, frowning again. "That was… random."

"He was definitely checking up on us," Alois said, "remember last month?"

Jana scoffed. "Mama and Papa trust us on our own, even after that."

"Mama and Papa don't think that anything weird happened then. Miguel does. Naja," he said, putting Alois the cat on the floor, where it immediately started rubbing up against his legs, "why do you think Miguel named it after me?"

Jana crouched down to look at the cat. "I am sure that he thinks that it looks like you." It was a small, exceptionally fluffy Russian blue with a black ribbon tied to its collar.

"…ja, I suppose that the hair and eye colors do match," Alois said, also crouching down to pet the kitten. "Do you think it matters, specifically, that it's so klein?"

"Probably."

"But I'm taller than Miguel."

"You are much… narrower than he is, in the shoulders…"

Alois stood back up, his angry/pouty face on. "I get it," he said, "und sowieso, we need Mama or Papa or Onkel Kristoph to get back before we can go get food and litter and Zeug."

"I wonder why Miguel did not bring…" Jana trailed off. So _that_ was why Alois assumed that he was really here just to check on them. He probably was so focused on that aspect of it that he forgot to bring along the cat-keeping necessities. In fact, he'd probably be back to drop them off later. "Well. In the meantime, we may as well go back to our game."

"Gute Idee."

* * *

 _February 14, 7:45 PM, Los Angeles Central Hospital, Psychiatric Ward_

Ares wasn't going to question the way he had woken up, just minutes ago, to the door to his room ( _cell, just call it what it is_ ) being slammed and to a sleek, flat tech device and his leather jacket - confiscated weeks ago - folded up on the foot of his bed. Attached to it was a typed note.

"Ares:

"At 7:45, you will have five minutes.

"Leave.

"Head towards eastside. Destroy this note.

"- Huitzilopotchli"

He wasn't going to question it. He immediately ate the note, letting the thin paper melt in his mouth (was this rice paper? Had Huitzilopotchli known he was going to choose this way to destroy the note? Did Huitzilopotchli want something with him? But what? And why?) while he examined the tablet. As it looked like a more polished version of Watson's time travel device - or at least what he assumed _that_ would look like based off of the blueprints, which were ultimately the only things he had seen of it so far - he could easily surmise what this thing was.

And then 7:45:00 struck, and nothing obvious happened - no explosions, no powerouts, no sudden uptick in activity among the nurses who always seemed to be bustling around. Undaunted, Ares shrugged his jacket on, glad to have it back, and walked casually out of his room - the door was unlocked, although as far as he remembered it really should have been, especially since the doors on these rooms ( _cells_ ) locked automatically - and down the hallway - the emergency exit door was also unlocked, going through it set off no alarm, and he passed no one. Just on the outside was a set of clothing - jeans, a button-down white shirt, a red tie, gray loafers, even a pair of sunglasses, which he had also sorely missed - which he quickly changed into, conscious of the fact that he only had about 50 seconds left. He didn't know if he was supposed to worry about the external security cameras or not, but erring on the side of caution, by the time 7:50:00 rolled around, he was already off-campus and heading West.

He followed roads for a while, until he got tired somewhere in Hollywood, and managed to find some mansion with a backyard, or rather a small, park-like garden behind it. Even though the sun had set almost three hours ago, most of the windows were dark, except for a few on the bottom floor. Maybe the living room. _Whatever, they probably aren't going to notice me_ , Ares thought, hopping the fence and settling with his back against a convenient tree, facing away from the house. He pulled out the tablet, inspected it, then flicked it on. It looked vaguely like a cannibalized, upgraded version of the MASON system, although right now the only things it offered him were CURRENT LOCATION (UTC): 14 FEBRUARY 2054 CE | LN α α | 20:14 and underneath, CURRENT LOCATION (WGS86): 34.1000° N, 118.3333° W. There was empty bar underneath that, like the kind that a password or PIN number is entered into.

Ares thought back to Huitzilopotchli's note, wondering if any of it was a clue or riddle or something that indicated a password. Maybe that was something he could have expected to get if he had actually followed all the instructions? But then again, he had seen enough of the Teotihuacan Foundation to know that they couldn't be trusted, even if (in his opinion) they seemed to have a few fewer screws loose than the Tula Group. Regardless, he tapped the input bar and was surprised to find, instead of a demand for a password, a window that said "HEAD TO PRESET LOCATION?" above a yes and a no icon.

A cat suddenly pressed up against him and meowed and he almost jumped a foot in the air. He pushed it away without looking at it, but it persisted. He finally glanced at it, surprised - it was an itty-bitty Russian blue with a black ribbon tied to its collar. It meowed again.

"Go away," he muttered to it, and returned his attention to the time travel device. _Preset location? Where? When?_ The kitten meowed again and head butted the device.

"Go _away_ ," Ares said, a bit louder now, as he pressed the yes icon. "I hate cats." There was a brief flash of colored light from the device, and a semi-transparent gaseous-liquid-looking orange and blue plane of light flickered into existence about a meter away from where he was sitting. _That must be the door_ , Ares thought. He didn't think it'd look like this. He glanced at the tablet again. He'd been hoping that opening the door when tell him exactly when and where it would lead to, but no dice.

The kitten meowed again, and then ran through the door.

Ares stared. That… that wasn't supposed to happen. Little thing was probably in huge trouble now - who knew where and when it was? For all Ares knew this whole thing was a trap and the unnamed cat had been deposited in the air over a live volcano, or in a Roman coliseum, or at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. Poor thing was as good as dead. "Whatever," Ares mumbled, looking away from the door it had just disappeared through. "Stupid cat. Got what it deserved."

He sat like this for about two minutes, frowning, then stood up, his breath hissing out through gritted teeth. "Stupid cat," he said again, loudly this time, and stepped through the door himself.

* * *

 _February 14, 8:20 PM, Gavin Estate_

"Was war das?" Alois said, pausing the game. "Is there someone outside?"

"Probably a homeless person," Jana said, shrugging.

"…they sounded close," Alois said, tilting his head. "We locked the doors, ja?"

"I think so, but maybe you should go check," Jana said, grabbing the controller from his hands.

"Ja, ja," Alois said irritably, standing up and looking around. "Where's the cat?"

"I do not know."

Sighing, Alois made a round of the bottom floor, checking the doors and windows and also keeping an eye out for their new pet. _Maybe it went upstairs?_ he thought as he reached the backdoor, and was immediately set on edge as he saw that not only was it unlocked, but it was also ajar. "He, Jana," he called cautiously, "I think I found where our cat went."

"It is your cat, really," Jana said, wandering over, "Miguel gave it to you… oh, the backyard." She rolled her eyes.

"Schau mal, that door should have been locked," Alois said, frowning at her.

"…sorry."

"Und I don't want my new cat to run away before we can actually ask Mama and Papa if we can keep it," he said, striding out into the garden, then stopping so suddenly that Jana, who had followed him out, rammed into him.

"What is your problem?" Jana snapped, then followed his gaze to the blue and orange lights bathing the bushes.

About a meter behind the sole tree in their backyard was a time door. Alois and Jana groaned simultaneously.

"Who is responsible for this?!" Jana whined loudly, stamping her feet.

"Hm," Alois said, ignoring her and looking around the garden, "tja, Jana, eigentlich, I think the cat went through the time door…"

"What."

"It's not, äh, here. And now. Ich glaube."

Jana stared at him for a few moments, and then they both turned to the door. It wavered back at them.

"I do not want to," Jana said, whining again.

"I didn't want to _first_ ," Alois said. "Jedoch, I don't want to lose my new cat either."

They stared at the door for another few moments.

"…although we should make _absolute sure_ that it isn't anywhere else in the house first."

* * *

 _August 5 (2001), 8:00 AM, Houzuki Discount Motel, Room #0006_

Ares looked around as he tried to rub the tingling sensation out of his arms. Where was that blasted cat? The door led to a specific point in time, everything exiting it should be right… here… _I suppose that would lead to trying to stick more than one thing in the same place if more than one thing went through the door_ , he thought, frowning at what horrible and possibly fatal things that could result from trying to put two objects in the same physical space. It was only the subject of two hundred B-list sci-fi movies, after all. _There's probably a delay function, so that if the cat went through the door two minutes before I did, I probably got here at… at…_ He checked the tablet. _…was it set to send me here to 07:58?_

He cautiously looked out the door and, seeing that the hallway was empty, stepped out into it. He headed off in an arbitrary direction, puzzling over the time coordinates. Was it just a matter of imprecision? Or did whoever pre-set the coordinates do so with the knowledge that something would be going through before Ares did?

Speaking of something, Ares' head jerked up when he heard a now-familiar meow. He pivoted on his heel, turning in the direction of the noise: room no. 0010, the door to which was slightly cracked.

As much as he would have liked to, Ares couldn't deny the sense of relief he felt when the wayward feline slipped out from behind the door, or the sense of horror when upon picking up the cat he noticed that it was covered in blood.

"Oh gods," he said out loud, frantically checking the cat over for injuries. Why did he feel so responsible for the stupid thing? It just meowed complacently at him.

Finally, satisfied that the kitten wasn't injured, Ares held it close to his chest (partially tucking it under his jacket - they may be in August now, but they had just left February and Ares could still feel the chill) and peeked into room 0010. That blood had to come from somewhere, and it was probably human.

 _Definitely human_ , Ares thought, stepping carefully into the room. He noted how similar the layout was to Watson's apartment, and then noted the dead man lying face down on the floor and seeping blood everywhere. There were some paw prints leading out of the puddle of blood. Ares looked at his feline companion.

"Hasn't anyone ever told you about preserving the crime scene?" He smirked at the kitten's adorable mewl in response.

 _Well, better get out of here before I get accused of murder again… or close enough to again, anyway_ , Ares thought, turning quickly towards the door, but then stopping as he noticed that the light was on in the kitchen, too. Unable to resist his curiosity, and never having been famed for making good decisions, Ares picked his way around the corpse and into the kitchen. There was a lot of blood in here, too, but what was more interesting was the fact that every surface in the kitchen was covered in food. It was like the dead guy had been in the middle of clearing out his fridge, which, speaking of, was on its side, although it was closed, plugged in, and apparently on.

Ares and the kitten exchanged a glance before Ares reached out to grasp the handle and-

"Freeze! Police!"

* * *

 **So what can you expect from this fic, besides the stuff in the summary? Getting more into the politics of time-travel, for one thing. And for another: the (proper) introductions of some fairly major (series-wide) characters.**

 **Please review and feed my delusion that people actually care about my wacko sci-fi next-gen AU!**

* * *

 **German translations! Including the obvious ones.**

 **Ich glaube nicht.: I don't think so.**  
 **Ja?: Yes?  
Wo...: Where...  
ich denke: I think**  
 **Naja,: Anyway,  
klein: small  
und sowieso,: and anyway,**  
 **Onkel: Uncle**  
 **Zeug: stuff**  
 **Gute Idee.: Good idea.**  
 **Was war das?: What was that?**  
 **He,: Hey,**  
 **Schau mal,: Look here,/Take a look,**  
 **Und: And**  
 **tja: yeah**  
 **eigentlich: actually**  
 **äh: (a filler sound)**  
 **Ich glaube.: I think.**  
 **Jedoch,: Although,**


	2. Chapter 2

_August 5 (2001), 8:10 AM, Houzuki Discount Motel_

"So… any idea where and when we are?"

Alois stared at Jana for a moment before narrowing his eyes and inclining his head towards the door of the room they had just exited. Room number 0006. That didn't tell them much.

"Ich habe keine Ahnung, kleine Schwester."

"Useful as ever," Jana scowled.

"I don't know what you want from me," Alois said, stifling a yawn. "Sowieso, that cat should be around here somewhere…" He noticed a couple police officers coming up the hallway. "Ach."

"I wonder what they are here for," Jana said as they kicked in the apparently already-open door to a room four doors down.

"Freeze! Police!"

"Kann sein we could ask them if they've seen a Russian blue kitten in this building," Alois thought out loud.

"I want to see what someone is getting arrested over," Jana said, trotting down the hallway.

"Rubbernecker," Alois called after her.

Jana rolled her eyes and hurried over to room 0010. By now she could hear that there was a scuffle going down. A blue-gray kitten streaked out from behind the door and ran down the hallway to Alois, who immediately fainted.

"What?" Jana said, freezing for a second, then running back to Alois and cat, forgetting about room 0010 entirely. She checked Alois first - he was fine, apart from the panic attack, but he was unresponsive at the moment so there wasn't much Jana could do - then checked the cat - as she suspected, it was covered in blood, but not _acting_ hurt, so it was probably fine too.

Meanwhile, police were escorting Clay "Ares" Justice out of room 0010.

"I just happened to walk in there!" he was snarling at the cops, "I don't even know that guy! I don't even know the name of this apartment complex!"

"This is a motel," one of the arresting officers said flatly, "speaking of names, what is yours?" Ares spat in his face.

"I want a lawyer," he growled, then caught sight of Jana and Alois (still on the floor). "You two!" he barked, "what are you doing here? Nevermind - go back and get Watson-"

"Wait a minute," the other officer said, "we need to talk to you two as well. Miss, is your friend okay?"

"Yes," Jana said stiffly, putting the kitten down and grabbing Alois under his arms and dragging him back into room 0006. As soon as his feet cleared the door, she locked it, knowing full well that she was abandoning the cat in… whatever year they were in, and that that officer was about fifteen seconds away from breaking down the door, probably. Fortunately, the time door was right here, and it wasn't hard to shove the limp Alois through it - he was pretty thin, and Jana was pretty strong - and then follow through herself.

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 8:50 PM, Detention Center_

"Watson Justice! Watson Justice!"

Watson turned around in her chair irritably, glaring at where Jana was standing in the doorway, gesturing frantically to her. "What?"

"Come out here, something important happened."

Watson glared at Jana for a minute, then turned back to the man she had been visiting, Tuck Alechi, with a helpless look. He shrugged. "I'll be right back," Watson said smoothly, sliding out of her chair and following Jana out into the hallway just outside the visitor's room. "What do you want?"

Jana opened her mouth, closed it, then opened it again and said, "It would be much easier to show you."

"Too bad," Watson said shortly. Jana launched into an slightly incoherent account of everything that had transpired since Miguel gave Alois a kitten.

"…right," Watson said when Jana was finally done. She glanced behind her at the visitor's room. "You know, the fun thing about time travel is that you can get stuff done whenever you like, so… tell me, did either of you think it was weird that Miguel was giving Alois a Valentine's day present? I mean, he's still underaged."

"That is not the point," Jana snapped, then grabbed Watson's sleeve and attempted to physically drag her out of the building. "And we need to use the door that Clay Justice opened up because neither Alois nor I know what time we went back to!"

"Alright, alright," Watson said, yanking her arm away from Jana. "Just let me say goodbye to Tuck first."

* * *

 _August 5 (2001), 9:00 AM, Detention Center_

"…and your name?" Gregory Edgeworth said, staring down the 25-year-old sunglasses-wearing man with the short mohawk who was sitting on the other side of the bulletproof glass.

The man just responded with an impassive glint of his sunglasses.

Sighing, Gregory said, "I need to call you something."

Still silent, the immediate-future defendant turned completely around in his chair. Clearly sulking. _My nine-year-old son is better behaved than this man_ , Gregory thought in exasperation.

"Maybe we should call him Takemikazuchi, Mr. Edgeworth," Raymond Shields said, pointing out the large white Japanese characters printed on the back of the suspect's leather jacket.

"So that's what they say," Gregory said, mostly to himself, then addressed his potential client: "If you're not going to tell us your name, should we just call you Mr. Takemikazuchi?"

"…alright, fine," he grunted after a long moment, then turned back around to glare at Gregory and Raymond from behind his sunglasses.

"So how come you didn't have any ID on you, Mr. Takemikazuchi?" Raymond said.

"It's a free country," Takemikazuchi sneered. "I didn't think I was going to get arrested."

"It's always a good idea to have your ID with you," Gregory told him.

"Shut up."

"No wonder the arresting officer called him 'belligerent'," Raymond said to himself, jotting down a note.

"I didn't _ask_ to be arrested."

Gregory sighed again. "Look, Mr. Takemikazuchi, did you do it or not? Are you innocent? …and please take off your sunglasses so I can look you in the eye."

Grumbling, Takemikazuchi took off his sunglasses and glared at Gregory again. Gregory was struck by the huge bags under his eyes, but persisted nonetheless. "Did you kill anyone?"

"No. I'm innocent," Takemikazuchi said, then broke eye contact and added, "in this matter."

There was a pause.

"Do you believe him, Mr. Edgeworth?" Raymond whispered to him. Gregory nodded. He felt sure that, if this man's records could be located, he would probably have a few (presumably minor) crimes under his belt, but he also felt sure that murder wasn't one of them. Besides, considering the lack of ID and inability to give a resident address… well, it seemed to Gregory that Takemikazuchi didn't have anyone else in his corner, anyway.

"Alright, Mr. Takemikazuchi," he said, "we still have a few questions for you, so if you would please-"

"Watson! What took you so long?" Takemikazuchi suddenly blurted out, staring behind Gregory and Raymond. They both turned around.

"I was _busy_ ," the ponytailed brunette in short shorts and a lab coat grumped. Behind her was a young man(?) with blue-silver hair and overly-formal purple clothing and an even younger woman, very pale, blonde, and also dressed extremely formally.

"Are you friends of Mr. Takemikazuchi's?" Raymond said.

The brunette blinked. "We know him," she said cagily.

Takemikazuchi growled shortly. "Here for the device I used, Watson? You already know that it wasn't yours."

"Device?" Gregory said, interested.

The brunette gave Takemikazuchi a severe look before turning to Gregory. "Watson Justice, the other two are with me," she said smoothly, digging a business card out of her pocket and handing it to him, "Mr. Takemikazuchi was testing some technology of ours. We weren't expecting this sort of… incident, so…" she trailed off.

"Tula Group?" Raymond said, reading the business card over Gregory's shoulder. "I-I've never heard of you."

Justice looked evasively to the side. "We're… niche. Anyway, I'd like to know more about the incident in question. I was just," she glanced at the two kids behind her, "informed of Mr. Takemikazuchi's arrest and I really don't have a lot of other information."

"I'm just trying to get my cat back," the boy muttered.

"Ah, the cat," Takemikazuchi said, going pale(r). "Mr. Edgeworth. Mr. Shields. Do either of you know what happened to it?"

"…I'm not sure," Gregory said, surprised by the sudden politesse.

"I think the police took it," Raymond said, "c-can a cat be used as evidence?"

"I want to see the crime scene," the girl said quietly.

"What exactly happened?" Justice asked.

Raymond flipped a few pages in his notebook and said, "The victim was a man named Cade Aver. He was stabbed to death in his motel room…"

"Speaking of motel rooms," Gregory said, "I heard that you made an interesting comment at your arrest, Mr. Takemikazuchi. You said, 'I don't even know the name of this apartment complex.'"

"…I might've said something like that," Takemikazuchi said, looking away again.

"How did you not know the name of the place you were in, and why did you think it was an apartment complex?"

"Yeah," Raymond said, "it would have been weirdly specific for you to know that it was an apartment complex and yet not know its name… but it was actually a motel. How did you _not_ know that?"

Takemikazuchi refused to answer. Gregory sighed.

"…anyway," Raymond said, looking back to his notebook, "so Cade Aver was stabbed to death in his motel room, and the police, acting on a tip, entered the room and found Mr. Takemikazuchi in the kitchen, so they're saying that they caught him red-handed. Anyway, also in the kitchen, there was another corpse-"

"What?" Takemikazuchi and the Tula Group people said at the same time. Gregory raised his eyebrows at them. How did they not know?

"There was another corpse in the fridge…" Raymond said, turning a page over in his notebook, "a woman named Agfa Ziation. She was strangled and shoved in the fridge."

"This is news to me!" Takemikazuchi burst out.

"You were arrested in the kitchen," Gregory pointed out.

"I didn't open the fridge!"

"I need to talk to the police," Justice interrupted, "Mr. Edgeworth, Mr. Shields, shall we go to the crime scene?"

 _We?_ Gregory thought, but nodded nonetheless.

* * *

 _August 5, 9:30 AM, Houzuki Discount Motel_

"Where did you get that business card from?" Jana muttered to Watson.

"Stole it," Watson said with a shrug.

"Who are the Tula Group?"

"None of your concern."

Jana glared at Watson for a moment before turning back to the crime scene. She, Alois, and Watson hadn't actually been allowed to enter - it had to be at least partially because Watson had insisted that she and Jana leave their attorney's badges at home.

Speaking of home, Alois was pointedly facing away from room 0010 and muttering angrily to himself in German about how much he didn't want to get involved in all this time travel stuff again and all he wanted was his cat back. Jana ignored him.

Regardless, Edgeworth and his ditzy assistant seemed to be making progress on the investigation. Probably. They had gone into the kitchen, which Jana couldn't see from here.

"I'm going home as soon as I get mein Kätzchen back," Alois groused.

"Shut up, Alois," Jana told him.

"Jana," Watson said evenly, "you should go back to the future before Ares' door closes in case Miguel comes back to your house. We don't want a repeat of last time."

"We will not have a repeat of last time if you set the return coordinates properly this time," Jana retorted.

"It's not my fault the door generates so much flux," Watson said defensively. "I don't know why Ares' door seems a lot more accurate… yet. Still-"

She didn't finish, because Jana was storming off in the direction of room 0006. "Kleine Schwester?" Alois said.

" _I'm going back just in case Miguel comes, but if I see him I'm going to ask about what he thinks actually happened last month. Get your cat and come back as soon as you can. Don't spend so much time around_ her _. Do you understand?_ " Jana fired back in German.

Alois smiled faintly. "Ich verstehe."

"I hate it when you two do that," Watson grumbled.

Their conversation was cut off by Manfred von Karma arriving at the scene as majestically as only Manfred von Karma could. He cast a cold, appraising eye over the time-travelers, and nodded once in apparent approval of Alois and Jana's clothing. He brushed by them without saying anything.

"That… that was Manfred von Karma," Jana said, absolutely starstruck.

"Jana," Alois said reproachfully.

"Manfred von Karma! Our grandfather!"

"He was a murderer," Watson said, rolling her eyes.

"And he forged evidence," Alois added

"He is not a murderer yet," Jana said, "it is _August_ 2001."

There was a brief pause.

"…do you think we should warn someone?"

* * *

 _August 5, 9:45 AM, Houzuki Discount Motel, Room #0010, Kitchen_

"Gregory Edgeworth."

Raymond jumped and scooted behind Gregory, who successfully resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

"Hello, Mr. von Karma. Any progress on the Masters investigation?"

Von Karma ignored him. "Are you defending the belligerent nameless man who murdered these two people?"

"Yes, I am. He didn't murder them."

"A-A-And he's going by the name T-Takemikazuchi," Raymond added hesitantly.

Von Karma hmphed. He imperiously surveyed the kitchen. The decision to hide Ziation's body in the fridge had clearly been impromptu, judging by the various perishables scattered around the kitchen. By now, forensics had already taken away about half of them - pictures of the crime scene had already been taken.

"Mr. von Karma, do you know what happened to the cat that my client had with him at the arrest?"

Von Karma gave him a dismissive look. "The cat is evidence."

"I-Is it because of the paw prints in the pool of blood?" Raymond asked, then quailed under von Karma's glare.

"The cat is unimportant," von Karma said.

"How long does the LAPD plan on keeping this cat as evidence?" Gregory asked.

"Why do you care so much about this cat?" von Karma said in lieu of an answer.

Raymond poked his head out from behind Gregory's back again. "Apparently it belongs to one of Mr. Takemikazuchi's co-workers." Gregory wasn't sure if _co-workers_ was the right term, but he nodded his confirmation.

"Co-workers?" von Karma said, "you mean the three young women who were loitering outside the door to the crime scene when I arrived?"

"Yes," Gregory said, knowing full well that pointing out that the blue-silver-haired young man was, in fact, a young man would be completely fruitless.

"Takemikazuchi's co-worker will have to sort this out with the LAPD herself," von Karma said imperiously.

"Raymond, go tell them," Gregory said, shooing him out of the kitchen. Sometimes it was easier to talk to von Karma one-on-one, when von Karma couldn't take control of the conversation by bullying Gregory's assistant. "Setting aside the issue of the cat," Gregory said once Raymond was gone, "I was hoping that you would share some information about the crime with us. We were unable to find out very much from the officers who first-"

"Struggle all you like, Gregory Edgeworth," von Karma said with an evil smirk, "Takemikazuchi has the clearest guilt of any defendant I have prosecuted all year. The trial will be over in a matter of days."

"Yes, well," Gregory said, completely unsurprised that von Karma turned the request for information into a chance to gloat, "this would probably be much easier for the both of us if I could just talk to the detective in charge of this case…"

Von Karma frowned. "I wouldn't have bothered to come here if I knew where she was."

"She?" Gregory hadn't known that they currently had a female detective on the force.

"A rookie," von Karma smirked in irritation. "This is her first case, and will likely be her last if she keeps bungling things as only a relative of yours can."

Gregory raised his eyebrows. A relative of his? Von Karma had to be mistaken - or else she was a very distant relative that he had never heard of before. Gregory was sure that he had no relatives in law enforcement.

Just then, Raymond stepped back into the kitchen. "Th-There's kind of an issue with the Tula Group people, Mr. Edgeworth."

"An issue?"

"A lady in a cravat showed up and picked a fight with both of them."

"That must be your relative," von Karma grunted. He, Gregory, and Raymond headed out into the front room.

When he saw the 'lady in a cravat', Gregory instantly decided that if she was relative, she must be a very, _very_ distant one. She looked nothing like any of his family members: she was pale, with black hair and blacker eyes; her hair was spiky but pulled back into a long braid at the nape of her neck, and her clothing was sort of like what Gregory imagined von Karma's wife would wear to the gym or something: pale pinks and purples, but very fine and oddly formal, combining a vest, rolled-up sleeves, and dress shorts, plus tall white boots. A detective's badge was pinned to said vest, so this was obviously the missing detective.

"A relative?" Gregory muttered to von Karma.

"Detective Misty Edgeworth," von Karma said with a sneer.

* * *

 **A/N: "Cade Aver" is a pun on "cadaver". ...yes, I have used this name before. Maybe this is a stealth crossover with the crossover fangame Ace Attorney: One Truth Prevails? ...eh, I'm not working on that anymore anyway.**

 **"Agfa Ziation: is a pun on "asphyxiation".**

 **Also, was that a DL-6 joke or a 9/11 joke? YOU'LL NEVER KNOW! MUAHAHAHAHA!**

* * *

 **Ich habe keine Ahnung, kleine Schwester.: I have no idea, little sister.**  
 **Sowieso,: Anyway,**  
 **Ach.: (filler sound)**  
 **Kann sein: Maybe**  
 **mein Kätzchen: my cat**  
 **Kleine Schwester?: Little sister?**  
 **Ich verstehe.: I understand.**


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Y'know, Detective Misty Edgeworth is actually one of my favorite characters in this series. I think I like her more than the 2057 version of Misty that showed up in Turnabout Timewarp. Of course, I think my favorite Janaverse character will always be Wat. She's fun. And weird!**

* * *

 _August 5 (2001), 10:10 AM, Houzuki Discount Motel_

Detective Misty Edgeworth was currently having a tense stand-off with Justice, who seemed slightly confused but still ready to fight if it came to that. The blue-silver-haired boy (Gregory really had to get his name at some point) stood slightly apart from them, even more confused than Justice and looking very much like he was just going to run if it came to blows.

"Detective," von Karma barked. Justice and her younger companion both jumped, but Detective Edgeworth just turned around, noticed von Karma, Gregory, and Raymond, and bowed apologetically.

"Sorry, sorry," she mumbled, "I know Mrs. Justice, that's all. I'm sorry."

Justice's face was somewhere between perplexed and offended. "Well, uh, Detective, I'm not here to _interfere_ with anything, I'm merely here to _observe_ , so please carry on with your job _like normal._ "

Detective Edgeworth glared at Justice - a very definite 'You can't tell me what to do; you're not the boss of me' look - but turned back to von Karma. "Again, sorry. Sir." The last word sounded forced. Without trying to justify or explain herself any further, she walked into room no. 0010.

Von Karma glared after her. "No idea how to address her superiors," he said through gritted teeth, then turned to Gregory. "Well, you wished to talk to her. I no longer wish to deal with her, so I am leaving. I doubt she knows enough to tell you anything useful, but you could use all the help you can get." He smirked. "And be sure to tell her I expect to see her in my office as soon as she leaves the crime scene."

"Of course, Mr. von Karma," Gregory said, giving Raymond an 'I know he's rude but he's throwing us a bone here, accept it graciously' look.

As soon as von Karma was gone, Raymond turned to Justice. "How do you know her?"

Justice hesitated just long enough to be odd. "Through work."

"But she's a detective."

"She's a new detective," Gregory told Raymond. "And I'd say she's about nineteen - it's possible she's held some kind of part time position at the Tula Group before. Is that reasonably correct, Ms. Justice?"

"Yes," Justice said immediately. Her blue-silver-haired companion still looked like he was working through something in his mind. _Probably best not to question it_ , Gregory though. This young man looked only a few years younger than Detective Edgeworth, and she was attractive, too. Gregory knew what that was like at that age.

"Anyway, Raymond, let's go back to the-" Gregory turned around. Raymond had already followed Detective Edgeworth back into the kitchen. Gregory rolled his eyes.

* * *

"Who was _that?_ " Alois hissed at Watson as Edgeworth returned to the crime scene. "Misty _Edgeworth?_ "

"That was Misty, all right," Watson muttered.

"Das gibt's doch nicht. An older Misty is one thing, but that wasn't _her_. She doesn't even have the same name, those clothes aren't her style, she doesn't really act similar…"

"I know, I know," Watson snapped. "She must be from an alternate timeline."

Alois frowned. "Why would she come here?"

"I don't know."

"And why does she hate you?"

"I-I don't know."

Alois narrowed his eyes. Oh, she knew, alright. Or knew something, anyway.

"What did you mean, 'An older Misty is one thing'?" Watson said abruptly.

"Was?" Alois said, raising his eyebrows. "With all this time travel business, it's not so unreasonable to think I might meet future versions of people I already know, ja?"

Watson looked at him for a moment longer, then looked away, apparently satisfied with this answer. Alois frowned to himself. That comment _was_ pretty careless… he'd been too caught up by the fact that he'd recognized Misty Edgeworth's voice. Not because he knew her (well, the her from his timeline) at age sixteen - her voice must have changed ( _must change?_ ) in the next three years, getting higher, more feminine-sounding. No, it was the fact that he was sure now that he'd heard _this exact voice_ before, albeit with a very different tone and inflection.

Last month, in 2019. Wright and Co. Law Offices. He was sure that it had been an older Misty Wright - or at least some version (not this one) of an older Misty Wright - that had stood by his makeshift bed and told her young father that Watson couldn't be trusted.

"Okay, tell me I'm not the only one thinking this," Watson said, interrupting Alois' thoughts.

"Eh?"

"They can't be real, right? I mean, I know she's only sixteen, but present Misty in _our_ timeline is really flatchested…"

Okay, she _had_ to be trying to distract him.

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 9:15 PM, Gavin Estate_

Jana paced the front hall of her house anxiously. Judging by all the clocks she had checked both before and after heading through the door after fetching Watson, only a minute had passed between leaving and coming back. Still, she fully expected Miguel to show up any second now. Surely sooner or later he would realize he had forgotten to hand over cat food, a litterbox, etc. when he gave Alois the cat-without-a-name-for-now.

And when he got here Jana was going to have to get him to tell her what he thought happened last month when she and Alois and Watson "vanished" for six hours. And she was going to have to do it without revealing what was actually going on, lest Watson find out. (Jana didn't even know what would happen in that case.) _And_ she was going to have to keep Miguel from noticing that Alois wasn't here - since at this point it was obvious that Alois, Watson, and Ares were all going to be stuck in 2001 for God only knew how long and end up taking Watson's horrible inaccurate door back, so Jana had no idea when they were actually going to return. After all, if Alois could take Ares' door like Jana did, he would be here already! But he wasn't! And it wasn't going to be easy keeping Miguel from noticing, because even back when Jana and Alois were little kids and Miguel was in high school and just babysitting them a couple nights a week, he had always seemed a lot fonder of Alois than Jana. (Maybe this was jealousy speaking. Jana didn't know. She really, really hoped there was nothing to be jealous of - she felt almost offended by the prospect of Alois stealing her crush. Especially since she was pretty sure Alois was straight. _Which just made it worse._ )

Ding-dong.

Jana started and ran to the door. Peering through the peephole (she had to stand on her toes to see through it) she saw, as fearfully expected, Miguel, looking embarrassed, and also holding a large cloth bag, the kind that ex-Bohemian moms take to the grocery store. It had cat stuff in it. Taking a deep breath, Jana opened the door.

"H-Hello."

"Sorry, forgot to drop this off along with Alois."

Jana twitched. "I will take that," she said, grabbing the bag from him, and immediately dropping it because it was a lot heavier than she thought it would be.

"Careful, filly," Miguel laughed, picking it back up, "cat litter's heavy. Here, where do you want me to put it? Has Alois decided he likes a particular room?"

"We - ah - well, we do not know if we can keep him yet."

"I'm sure your parents will be fine with it. I've heard that both your mom and your uncle used to own dogs, anyway." Jana followed him to the laundry room, where he set the bag down, knelt down next to it, and pulled out the litter tray. "Anyway… where's my kitten?"

Jana silently bit her lip. She was wondering now if, if Miguel had dropped off the cat in the first place in order to make sure that Jana and Alois hadn't vanished again, he hadn't intentionally forgotten to bring the pet supplies so he could come back and check on them again later. It was almost diabolical. Especially since Alois had legitimately vanished.

"Filly?"

"Ah, last month," Jana blurted out, "I wanted to ask you about last month."

Miguel stopped opening the bag of litter and looked up at Jana. "Last month? You mean when you two and Wat all dropped off the face of the earth for six hours?" His voice shook slightly at the end of the sentence.

Jana nodded slowly. "I wanted to- Alois wanted me to ask what you think happened last month."

Miguel looked her dead in the eye, and Jana fidgeted. "Are you going to _tell_ me what happened last month, filly?"

"I… I do not think I should." She looked away from him. "I am not, however, going to stop you from guessing it on your own. And if you do, then I do not see why there would be a problem with me giv- …corre- …confirming or denying what you say."

Miguel gave her a long look, then turned back to the litterbox. "Is this your way of telling me that somebody needs to know what's going on but you're afraid to tell anyone yourself?"

"Just… tell me what you think happened last month."

"I think Wat kidnapped you, that's what."

* * *

 _August 6 (2001), 9:40 AM, District Court, Defendant's Lobby No. 2_

Ares tapped his foot as he waited for court to begin. Still a bit of time to go. Neither Edgeworth nor Shields were speaking to him at the moment; they were commiserating a bit away, and a large part of the conversation involved Shields complaining that the detective on the case hadn't been very helpful the day before, then excusing her and leaping to her defense whenever Edgeworth agreed on this point.

He glanced at the clock and wondered what everyone else from the year 2054 was doing. After they had left the detention center, he had only seen Watson briefly one more time. All she really told him at that point was that Jana had left and Edgeworth, Shields, von Karma, et al. had already forgotten about her, so don't bring her up.

A young woman walked into the room and Ares lowered his sunglasses to get a better look at her. Yep, that was definitely Misty Wright - he'd known her since she was a loaf of bread wrapped in a pale blue blanket. But while he'd fallen out of touch with her in recent years, he knew that she didn't look like this - this one _had_ to be an older version, high schoolers couldn't be this hot unless your name was Miguel Fey-Armando - and he was pretty sure that she didn't dress like her step-father, so this must be walking confirmation of the existence of alternate timelines. He wasn't sure if he was grinning or grimacing at that.

Alternate-adult-Misty gave a friendly nod to Edgeworth and Shields, then quickly walked over to Ares and pulled him slightly aside and whispered to him, "Mr. Ares, sir, it's good to see you. Your anchor point is in 2054 at the moment, isn't it, sir?"

Ares frowned at the sirs, but nodded.

"Alpha alpha timeline, sir?"

"Wouldn't every timeline call itself the alpha alpha timeline?"

"No, sir, the Teotihuacan Foundation had that standardized as far as the rho timelines." She grinned. "Sir, I'm Misty Edgeworth-Wright, from the alpha lambda timeline. I go by my biological father's last name, but you can just call me Misty, sir, like you used to."

"Like I used to?" Ignoring the fact that her biological father was clearly Wright - and obviously the (surrogate) mother had been Iris…

"Like the lambda version of you did, sir." She frowned. "I guess there's already a Misty in this timeline, sir, isn't there?"

"Misty Wright. She was sixteen when I left."

"I'm nineteen, sir. Maybe you should call me Misty +3, sir."

Ares tilted his head to the side. "How about Misty E? Or just E."

E grinned again. Just then, Shields came wandering over. "Do you know Mr. Takemikazuchi, Misty?"

"This is my first time meeting him, since Mr. von Karma didn't give me the time to visit him in the detention center yesterday." E's statement was contradicted by the affectionate glance she spared Ares as she said it. "I had to leave his interrogation to some other officers."

"That was fun," Ares grunted. Sarcasm aside, he had actually made one of the officers cry…

"Ah, alright," Shields said brightly, "I was worried it'd be another situation like you had with Wat yesterday."

"A situation?" Ares raised an eyebrow at E. The corner of her mouth twitched.

"That's a private matter between us," she said.

"They almost got into a catfight," Shields said.

"Maybe I'll tell you about it later, si- s… S-Sakemikazuchi."

" _Take_ mikazuchi," Ares corrected. E rolled her eyes in the direction of Shields, then shrugged. Shields blinked.

"Raymond, Mr. Takemikazuchi, Detective," Edgeworth called from the other side of the room, "I've just been informed that the trial will begin in about five minutes."

"I'd better go now, Mr. Ares, sir, but I'll catch up with you after the trial," E muttered while Shields was distracted, and slipped out the door.

Shields turned around again. "You'd think those heels would make more noise when she moves," he commented, startled.

* * *

 _August 6, 10:00 AM, District Court, Courtroom No. 2_

"Court is now in session for the trial of… er…"

"The defendant goes by the name Takemikazuchi, your Honor," Gregory said.

"However, the defendant has refused to submit any identification, and there are no records of him anywhere," von Karma said, fingers tightening at his sleeve. "He is listed as John Doe in the arrest warrant and court records."

The Judge nodded once. "Takemikazuchi sounds snappier," he said, "Court is now in session for the trial of Mr. Takemikazuchi."

"The defense is ready, your Honor."

Von Karma scowled for a moment before saying, "The prosecution is perfectly ready, your Honor."

"Very well. Mr. von Karma, your opening statement, please."

"A perfectly open-and-shut case," von Karma said, almost as if he were talking to himself, "This trial will be over in exactly three minutes."

 _That's not an opening statement_ , Gregory thought exasperatedly.

"How is he supposed to present all his evidence in three minutes?" Raymond, who was standing next to Gregory, said.

"The prosecution calls Detective Edgeworth to the stand."

"Hmm," the Judge said as Detective Edgeworth took the stand. "A relative of yours, Mr. Edgeworth?" Gregory wasn't sure how to answer that.

"Witness. Name and occupation."

"Misty Edgeworth, police detective." There was a brief pause, then Detective Edgeworth forced out a "Sir."

"I bet he chewed her out for 'rudeness' yesterday," Raymond muttered darkly.

"Describe the crime, Detective Edgeworth," von Karma said.

She immediately launched into her testimony. "Around seven or eight in the morning yesterday, Cade Aver, 30, and Agfa Ziation, 33, were murdered. The defendant, uh, allegedly was in the process of hiding Ziation's body in the fridge when the police, acting on a tip from a neighbor, caught him in the kitchen. He was arrested immediately."

"Mr. Edgeworth, you may begin her cross-examination."

"I see she's still being really vague," Raymond commented.

"I'm not sure how much time she's actually spent working on this case," Gregory replied, then asked, "Detective, could you elaborate on how Aver and Ziation were killed?"

"Sure. They were strangled with a cord and stabbed with a kitchen knife, respectively." She presented the relevant evidence. The kitchen knife belonged to the motel, and the cord appeared to be cut from a length of piano wire. Neither had fingerprints on them.

"Objection," Gregory said quietly while Raymond facepalmed, "it's the other way around, Detective."

"Ooh. Sorry."

"It's such a shame to face your first salary review with this kind of track record, Detective Edgeworth," von Karma said. Everyone else ignored him. He was just testy because his three minutes were up.

"What evidence do you have that my client was hiding Ziation's body in the refrigerator?"

"Well, that's where her body was…"

"…and?" Raymond prompted.

"His fingerprints were on the handle."

"Yeah, but I didn't _open_ it," Takemikazuchi protested loudly from the defendant's box.

The Judge banged his gavel once. "Mr. Takemikazuchi," he said sternly, "outbursts in court will not be tolerated."

"What else can you expect from a lowlife like him?" von Karma stage-muttered.

"Why would my client leave fingerprints on the refrigerator, yet not on the knife?" Gregory objected. "If he was wearing gloves-"

"He was not wearing gloves," von Karma cut across, and presented a blood-stained washcloth. "He wrapped the washcloth around the handle of the handle of the knife in order to not leave fingerprints, but failed to do the same for the refrigerator handle."

"Why would the murderer hide the body in the refrigerator?" Gregory pressed on.

"He was planning on putting both bodies in it," von Karma said stiffly, "however, he was interrupted and was unable to finish doing so." He crossed his arms. "Ziation was either killed in closer proximity to the kitchen, or else she was put in the refrigerator first simply because she was lighter."

"Objection!" Gregory said, "even with all the items inside removed, there would not be enough room for both Ziation and Aver's bodies!"

Von Karma scoffed. "Clearly, the defendant did not plan _from the start_ on hiding the bodies in the refrigerator," he said dismissively.

"W-Wouldn't that make it a crime of passion?" Raymond said.

Gregory nodded. "Mr. von Karma, if it were a crime of passion, then why are their manners of death different? Why would the murderer not use the same weapon on both of them? It's unlikely that-"

"Objection!" von Karma bellowed, "just because the defendant did not initially plan on hiding the corpses in the refrigerator does not mean that this is not a premeditated crime. Moreover, he could simply be a bad planner."

"Or the murderer could have killed Ziation first and then decided that a cord wasn't efficient enough and swapped it out for a knife to kill Aver," Detective Edgeworth offered, "or maybe the other way around - they decided that the knife was too dull, or maybe they didn't want to take it out of Aver's body." Indeed, the knife was still embedded in Aver's back… although according to his autopsy report, he had been stabbed multiple times, and according to the forensic report, he had been stabbed in the kitchen and then either was dragged or dragged himself to the front room.

"Speaking of plans," Gregory said, smoothly changing topics, "why would the murderer pick a refrigerator as a hiding place?"

"Yeah, why not just shove them in a closet?" Raymond added. "That way, they wouldn't have to spend so much time taking everything _out_ of the fridge."

"We think that they were trying to throw off the time of death to create an alibi for themselves," Detective Edgeworth said brightly, "the fridge was still plugged in, right? So if both of the bodies were in the fridge, the decomposition would slow down and once they _were_ discovered, it would be hard to tell when exactly they died. The murderer probably had something that they were going to do right after the murder so they could establish that they were somewhere else during the window of time in which they could have died."

Raymond let out a low whistle. "Clever."

"Fortunately, he was interrupted," von Karma said, "so his 'clever' plan was all for naught. Even if he had been able to escape from the crime scene as he so tried while being arrested, Aver's body would still tell us exactly when the murder took place."

"Just to be clear," Gregory said, "Ziation's time of death is ambiguous, and you're only assuming that she died at the same time as Aver."

"Pretty much," Detective Edgeworth said. She didn't seem bothered by this at all; if von Karma was, he certainly wasn't showing it.

"Maybe they didn't really die at the same time, Mr. Edgeworth," Raymond whispered.

"That's a possibility," Gregory whispered back, "but I'd need some sort of proof before I could pursue that theory." He cleared his throat. "Detective, I'd like to know more about this tip. You said it came from a neighbor?"

"Oh yes, Lacey Raytions. She lives - er, is checked in long-term in room no. 0011."

"She is currently prepared as a witness, of course," von Karma growled.

"Very well," said the Judge, "Mr. Edgeworth, do you have any more questions for Detective Edgeworth?"

"Okay, seriously, why does she have the same last name as you?" Raymond said in an aside.

"Right now I would like to talk to Ms. Raytions," Gregory said, ignoring Raymond.

"Will Ms. Lacey Raytions please take the stand?" the Judge said.

An scarecrow-thin old woman in a long, old-fashioned cotton dress and a kerchief took the stand. She was holding a cat, although not the same one that Alois Gavin (as Gregory had finally found out yesterday) was insistent on getting back.

"Witness, name and occupation," von Karma rumbled.

"Dr. Lacey Raytions, retired veterinary surgeon," the old woman croaked, petting her cat.

"And you 'live' in the room next to the one where the murders took place?"

"Yes I do," Raytions wheezed, "I couldn't've possibly missed it. The walls're paper-thin in that ratty cheap motel, so my cats an' I'd heard every word those cops yelled at that poor boy that stabbed that poor young man or whatever happened."

"And you were the one who called the tip in in the first place?" Gregory asked.

Raytions nodded. "It wasn't because I heard the murder happenin' or anythin', young man. No screamin' or runnin' around. In fact, I didn't even know it was a murder 'til after the arrest, although to be honest, I'ven't heard a lot about it even now."

"So why did you call in the tip in?" the Judge said.

"That cat," Raytions sniffed.

"That cat?" Raymond said.

"Yes, boy. Pets're allowed at the motel, on the condition that they don't leave your room unless they're either being held or on a leash. Now, I've a lot of cats in my room, so I'm extra sure to keep that rule, so the motel management doesn't kick me an' my cats out and I gotta find us another place to stay on my piddly Social Security pension. Whenever I see someone else's pets runnin' around the hallways, I always call it in to the management." She scratched her cat behind its ears as if for emphasis.

"So you didn't call the tip into the police?" Gregory said, "You called it in to the motel management?"

"Young man, I wasn't done. As I was sayin', I saw that cat runnin' around in the hallway an' I was about to call it in to the management, when I saw it run into the room next to me. I put the phone down, but then I saw that boy in the defendant's chair walkin' down the hallway. I didn't recognize him, so when he entered the motel room without using a card to unlock it first, I went back an' got the phone an' called the police instead of the motel management. I thought he might've been some kind of cat burglar."

There was a brief pause.

"Mr. Edgeworth, you may begin your cross-examination," the Judge said pointlessly.

"Witness," Gregory said at length, "about how much time would you say passed between when you called the tip in and when my client was arrested?"

Raytions shrugged. "When you get to be my age, young man, you start to lose track of time. I didn't check the time when I called it in, but I do remember thinkin' that the police got there awfully fast."

"Of course they did," von Karma said, "the Houzuki Discount Motel is only about a block away from a police station."

"Does the prosecution maintain that Dr. Raytions witnessed Mr. Takemikazuchi entering room no. 0010 to kill the victims?" Gregory said.

"Yes," von Karma said.

Gregory frowned slightly. "Witness, was my client acting suspicious in any way apart from not using a motel card to unlock the door?"

"He was wearin' sunglasses indoors, an' a leather jacket in August," Raytions said gravely, "still is, in fact."

"T-That's not suspicious," Raymond protested.

"Better than wearin' an officially licensed Jammin' Ninja jacket, boy."

 _That was a low blow_ , Gregory thought, successfully resisting the urge to chuckle at Raymond's flustration.

"Anyway, in that motel, you need a card to unlock the doors. Since he didn't use one, I thought for sure that meant that he wasn't stayin' at the motel, and if he'd've worked there I'd've recognized him, so if he was enterin' the room, he was probably robbin' it."

"I see," said Gregory, "however, you mentioned that the cat went into the room before my client did. Wouldn't this mean that the door was already opened?"

Raytions was silent for a moment. "I heard a door close after the cat went in the room," she said at length.

"Clearly, the cat belonged to Aver," von Karma said, "and he closed the door to his room after letting it in. Then the defendant broke into the room in order to kill him and Ziation."

"What makes you say the cat belonged to Aver specifically?" Gregory said.

"Aver was the one checked into the room," von Karma said flatly. "Ziation was merely his guest. What sort of guest brings a cat along?" He gave Raytions a disgusted look, which she ignored.

"How long had he been checked into the motel room for?" Gregory asked, holding his fingers up his mouth in thought. "Did he live there?"

"Nope," Raytions said before von Karma could, "he checked into that room a few days ago. Didn't bring much luggage with him, either - he was probably goin' to leave pretty soon."

"He appears to have been in town on a business trip preceding a vacation," von Karma said, "his permanent residence is in Tracy, and his financial records showed a recent purchase of an airline ticket to Lithuania."

"Lithuania, huh?" Raymond said to himself. Gregory blinked. Lithuania wasn't exactly a popular tourist destination, and Aver wasn't a Baltic name.

"What sort of relationship was there between Ziation and Aver?" Gregory asked.

"That is uncertain," von Karma said, crossing his arms.

"If that young woman was visitin' that young man in a private motel room," Raytions said severely, "they must've been lovers."

Von Karma snorted. "Ms. Ziation was engaged."

"That doesn't rule it out."

"It would be prudent to talk to Ms. Ziation's fiancé," Gregory agreed.

"Mr. von Karma," the Judge started.

"He is not currently prepared as a witness," von Karma interrupted, grumbling.

"In that case, we will resume this trial tomorrow," the Judge said, and banged his gavel. "Court dismissed."

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 9:27 PM, Gavin Estate, Laundry Room_

"You think Watson Justice kidnapped us?"

Miguel nodded solemnly. "It's the only explanation I've been able to come up with. I don't know how, but-"

"But do you know why?" Jana blurted out.

"…" Miguel sat back, summoned a cup of coffee, and scrutinized Jana over the rim of it. "Are you admitting that that was exactly what she did?"

Jana seemed lost in thought for a moment before she slowly said, "We… went with her voluntarily. Alois did not lie to you."

Miguel shook his head. "Lying on a technicality is still lying," he said. "Put it this way, filly: did you agree to go with her, or were you _forced_ to agree to go with her?"

"…what difference does it make?" Jana was refusing to look him in the eye.

Miguel took a contemplative sip of coffee. A reserved Jana was a frightened one, he knew that. "Did she threaten you or hurt you?" Jana shook her head. "Why did you go with her?"

There was a very long pause. Miguel had taken on enough cases with too-young victims and witnesses to know that sometimes it was better to be patient - he cringed internally at the way he was thinking about this. It was obvious by now that was no longer _any_ chance of Watson coming out of this smelling like roses, but he hated thinking of either of the von Karma-Gavin siblings as _victims_ , especially _young_ ones.

"Watson Justice is insane," Jana whispered.

"I know," Miguel said in an equally quiet voice. He blinked as something occurred to him. "Filly. Has Wat been here today?" She looked away, and Miguel sat up straighter. "Where… is your brother?"

Jana gave him a wide-eyed look. "Do you really think he is unsafe with Watson Justice?"

Miguel jumped up and grabbed Jana by the shoulders. "Don't you?!" he demanded, ignoring the way she drew back her riding-crop arm.

"I… I…"

"Where are they?"

"I should not tell you," she said, pushing his hands away. "Just tell me what you know, or what you think you know, Miguel."

Miguel shook his head angrily. "Filly, now's not the time-"

"If something happens to either of us, someone needs to know what is going on. Please just-"

"Do you know when my kitten is coming back?"

"Tonight. I am sure."

"Do you know where he is?"

"Someplace you cannot get to." She was staring determinedly at the floor.

Miguel stared down at Jana for another minute, acutely aware of how heavy his organizer felt in his pocket. "Alright, filly," he said after a long while, his mouth feeling unusually dry and sour. "We'd better sit down for this."

* * *

 **"Lacey Raytions" is a pun on "lacerations". Also, I haven't liked a one-off character this much since Tuck Alechi. (I REALLY LIKE TUCK ALECHI, THOUGH, WHICH IS WHY I'VE GIVEN HIM SOME KIND OF CAMEO OR REFERENCE BOTH HERE AND IN TURNABOUT TIMEWARP. HAHA.) (Don't worry, you'll get another fic about him sometime. Did you really think I'd leave all that backstory from Subterranean Turnabout unexplored?)**

* * *

 **Das gibt's doch nicht: That's impossible.**  
 **Was?: What?**


	4. Chapter 4

_August 6 (2001), 3:00 PM, Detention Center_

"Had fun watching my trial?" Ares said dryly.

"More fun than defending you," Watson shot back.

"Nochmals, I'm just here to get my cat back," Alois said, playing with his hair. He was also wondering how old that judge was - it was the exact same judge that had presided over his trial two months ago. He was younger, his beard was shorter and much blonder, but… _…how old_ is _the Judge?_ _Unheimlich…_ And add that to the sheer weirdness of talking to his nine-year-old uncle for half an hour. Meeting him at age 26 was weird enough!

"Your stupid cat is what got me into this mess," Ares grumbled.

Watson gritted her teeth. "You shouldn't have left the psychiatric ward in the first place."

"Can't I just stay at the motel?" Alois muttered to himself, leaning against the wall. "I don't need to be here."

Misty Edgeworth walked into the room, glaring at Watson as she did so. "Mr. Ares, I don't have a lot of time to talk, sir."

"She calls you 'sir'?" Watson said, aghast.

"Yes, I do, Mrs. Justice," Misty Edgeworth spat, "it's only proper for me."

Ares frowned slightly. "E, you said you were going to tell me why you almost got into a fight with Wat." _E?_ Alois thought. _They must have talked before this._

"And why do you call me 'Mrs.'?" Watson asked irritably.

Misty E turned back to Ares, cheerful again. "It's because I don't like her, sir."

Watson repeated her question, and was again ignored.

"Why not, exactly?"

Misty E gave a sharp glance to Watson, but had apparently forgotten that Alois was even in the room. "The war between the Teotihuacan Foundation and the Tula Group, of course, sir." Alois raised his eyebrows. There was the Tula Group again…

"What? What war?" Ares said, "what does the Teotihuacan Foundation have to do with this?"

"Or the Tula Group?" Watson said with a frown.

Misty E looked between the two of them for a moment before frowning herself. "Sir, I thought you said you were from 2054…?"

"He is," a new voice - a new _very familiar_ voice - said from the entrance to the visitor's room. Everyone looked at the same time to the source, which was an exact doppelgänger of Misty E, except in a skirt-and-jacket combo and a magatama instead of a cravat. "Things work a little differently in the alpha alpha timeline-"

"Who are you?" Misty E said at the same time as the newcomer Misty did.

 _Things really didn't need to get more interesting_ , Alois thought sarcastically.

"I suppose you're from the alpha alpha timeline, then?" Watson said. Misty Not-E gave her a look of distaste - more specifically, Alois observed, the look of distaste that one would give a much-hated boss.

"Watson," she said in clipped voice, "last time I talked to you, you were still hiding out in the alpha omega timeline with your wife. You must really be from 2054, then."

"Wife?" Watson said, taken aback, then mumbled, "I'm straight, though."

Misty Not-E turned back to Misty E and Ares (whom Misty E was standing in front of, although the bulletproof glass probably rendered that redundant). "I'm not here to fight," she said smoothly, then extended a hand. "Detective Misty Wright, alpha alpha timeline, base year 2057. I'm here to check up on some things for the Tula Group." She shot a glare at Watson as she said that, but quickly looked back to Misty E, who was staring at her tensely.

"…Detective Misty Edgeworth-Wright," she finally declared, "alpha lambda timeline, base year 2051. I've moved to this timeline to protect Mr. Ares not only for the Teotihuacan Foundation, but also for myself." She abruptly smiled and shoved her own arm out to shake Misty-2057's hand-

And Misty-2057 spun around and Judo flipped Misty E over her shoulder. The latter landed hard, but in an instant had kicked Misty-2057's legs out from underneath her, and she fell too. They both immediately jumped to their respective feet and dropped into fighting stances.

It was a shame that Alois only had the audio recording on his phone turned on. There was no way he could get away with outright filming this, though. At some point, Watson and Ares were going to remember that he wasn't just another part of the background.

"But what do _we_ have to do with the Teotihuacan Foundation _or_ the Tula Group?" Watson said to Ares as the two Misties squared off.

"Hey," Ares said, holding his hands up disarmingly, but also smirking, "all I know is that the Teotihuacan Foundation - or at least Huitzilopotchli - wanted me out of that psychiatric ward. I'm not the one with a Tula Group business card."

"It was convenient," Watson snapped.

Alois' eyebrows drew together. Huitzilopotchli? Where had he heard that name before? That's right, a month ago… _I hope Jana and Miguel are having a conversation as enlightening as this one._

* * *

 _August 6, 3:00 PM, Houzuki Discount Motel, Room No. 0011_

Ray shifted uncomfortably on Raytions' couch. She _had_ said she had "a lot of cats" earlier, but Ray had assumed that she meant three or maybe four. Five at the most.

She had 34 cats. Granted, they were all very well-cared for and social ( _very_ social, Ray had four on his lap and another two half on the back of the couch, half on one of his shoulders), which was probably why a retired veterinary surgeon could only afford to live in a ratty motel, but…

 _If I were allergic to cats_ , Ray thought, _I would be dead by now._

"Thank you," Edgeworth said as he took his tea from Raytions. Ray mumbled his own thanks for his own tea, and surreptitiously inspected it for cat hair as his mentor said, "There were a few things I wanted to ask about, Dr. Raytions-"

"Oh, please, call me Lacey, young man," Raytions said amicably, shooing a cat out of the way and sitting down on a scratched-up armchair.

"Yes, well, Lacey, I'd like to know more about what you heard in the room next to you yesterday."

"As I said in court, not much," Raytions said primly, sipping her tea, "it was pretty quiet up until the cops showed up."

"But two people were murdered," Ray pointed out.

"I know that, boy," Raytions snapped, "but I didn't hear any murderin' goin' on yesterday mornin'. It was quiet as the grave."

"How appropriate," Edgeworth murmured. "Now, you've heard Mr. von Karma's theories on-"

"He's full of it," Raytions said, sipping her tea calmly. "Those two murder victims were definitely lovers. As I said: the walls're paper-thin in this ratty cheap motel. My cats an' I hear _everythin'_ in both rooms on either side of us." Ray suddenly felt a little sick to his stomach. Raytions jerked her head towards the opposite wall. "For instance, nobody's slept in room no. 0012 in almost two weeks. An' before that young man checked into room no. 0010, it was empty for a month."

"That's an awfully long time for a motel," Edgeworth noted.

Raytions rolled her eyes. "This isn't a motel exactly," she said, "it's just called that. It's more like an apartment buidlin': almost everyone stays here long-term. I've been rentin' this room out for five years now. But that's beside the point, isn't it, young man?"

"Yes, it is," Edgeworth said, "I wanted to ask about what you _did_ hear, even if you didn't hear a murder. Anything would help."

"Mm." She took a sip of her tea. "Well, let's see. Startin' from when I saw that little Russian blue: I heard a door close an' then the boy you're defendin' entered the room. I called the cops right after that, but as soon as I got off the phone I started listenin' in again. I heard him walking towards the kitchen, but that's all."

"So there's no way that the murder happened after you called the police, right?" Ray said.

"That's what it sounds like," Edgeworth said.

Raytions shrugged. "Not my place to say either way."

"Did you hear anything earlier in the day?"

"I didn't wake up 'til about an hour before your client showed up. Unlike my cats, I'm a pretty heavy sleeper." She frowned. "That prosecutor told me to keep that under wraps, though."

"Of course he did," Ray groaned. Edgeworth made a note of that in his court record.

"What about the door closing after the cat went into this room?" Edgeworth said, "it took some prompting for you to mention it. Did it slip your mind until you were reminded in court, Lacey?"

Raytions nodded fervently. "That's exactly right, young man. I'd totally forgotten. That is, I remembered hearin' a door, but I didn't realize it was room no. 0010's door until you brought it up."

"So it's possible that it wasn't room no. 0010's door?" Edgeworth said.

"Maybe it was a few doors down," Ray added.

"I suppose that's possible," Raytions said. "Now that I think about it, it _did_ sound more like it was from room no. 0006 or 0007."

"Who is staying in either of those rooms?" Edgeworth asked.

Raytions frowned in thought and finished off her tea. "Not sure. Room no. 0007 was empty last I heard, but I'm pretty sure room no. 0006 was rented out on some company's dime yesterday afternoon."

"Really?" Ray said, eyebrows raised.

"Yeah, some girl an' a boy who can't be out of high school. I asked the maid about them, an' she mentioned that they were loiterin' around the crime scene yesterday."

"Ah," Edgeworth said, "the representatives from the Tula Group." He frowned, touching his jaw in thought. "Why would they check into such a cheap motel, and get a room a few down from the crime scene their colleague's related to…?"

"You think they're suspicious, Mr. Edgeworth?"

"I think it'd be worth it to ask a little more about their relationship to Mr. Takemikazuchi," Edgeworth said, "but if we're looking for the real killer, I think a better place to start would be Ziation's fiancé."

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 9:45 PM, Gavin Estate_

Miguel and Jana were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. Miguel had his organizer out and had laid a select few pages over the table, which Jana was pouring over.

"…and you found all of these in Watson Justice's room?" she said at last.

"Yep," Miguel said, drinking his coffee. (He had given Jana her own mug, although she had diluted the life out of it with sugar and cream before taking a sip.) "Well, not these 'pages' specifically - I took pictures of them." He scowled briefly. "It was a good thing I backed them all up to my computer before _someone_ wiped my phone. Anyway, these are copies."

Jana stared at the pages for another moment, eyebrows furrowed. "But what does this all mean?"

"I was hoping you'd know, filly."

She shook her head. "I have not heard of- wait." She picked up one of the papers and stared at it, sucking on her lower lip. "Watson Justice had a business card earlier."

"A business card?" Miguel said, leaning across the table.

"I did not see it myself, but apparently it said 'Tula Group' on it."

"Ah." Miguel sat back, grimacing into his coffee cup. "I figured Wat was a member of one of these organizations."

Jana shrugged. "She said that she stole it." She hesitated. "But that would make sense. Alois and I speculated on it last month while we were… away."

"The trouble is," Miguel said, "I don't know what it means if she's a part of the Tula Group. Technically, I don't even know if either the Tula Group or the Teotihuacan Foundation are _real_ , because when I tried to look into them, I only got rumors." He tapped one of the pages. "The only group registered as any kind of organization with the government is the Quetzalcoatl Law Firm."

"What does your sister's law firm have to do with the other groups?" Jana said, puzzled.

"No idea. Maybe it doesn't, but Wat had a lot of information with QLF headers." He paused. "Some of it was stolen from Maria, you know."

Jana nodded. "Clay Justice is involved," she said.

"How involved?"

"I do not know. …he and Watson Justice were working together, but she seemed glad to be rid of him."

Miguel slouching in his chair, smirking in thought. _Ares again…_ he picked up one of the pages, some sort of map with events instead of locations. He didn't even know what most of the events referred to - they looked like case classifications, but he only recognized a few of them; everyone knew what DL-6 was, but following the arrow that lead to it backwards only led to IS-7, which Miguel had never head of. IS-7 also lead to SS-5, which was similarly a mystery to Miguel, as were KG-1 and TL-20.

"They're working on time travel, right?" he said. Jana jumped.

"What?" she said.

"Time travel," Miguel repeated. "I remember what Ares said in court last December, and I know that Wat moonlights a temporal physicist." He handed the event map to Jana. "And then there's stuff like this. It looks like Wat, at least, was working towards time travel, and I think-" He remembered his conversation with Ares in the detention center last month. "-no, I'm _sure_ Ares was helping her. And I don't know about that blackmail explanation either."

Jana nodded eagerly, half-standing up. "Yes, you are right, Miguel, they were working on time travel. They-" she cut herself off.

Miguel raised his eyebrows. "But it's impossible, isn't it? And even if that was what they were doing, why would Wat kidnap you?"

"It- it-" Jana slumped in her chair. "It is a little more complicated than just equations and information, Miguel."

"I know, filly," Miguel said, reaching across the table and gently rubbing her shoulder. "But if they're working on time travel - they've started constructing some kind of hardware for it, right?"

Jana looked up. "Hardware?"

"This is what I figure so far," Miguel said, hand still on Jana's shoulder. "Wat and Ares were working on this time travel thing because I don't know, they're crazy, and it all goes south when Ares gets caught stealing data from Maria - I don't know why Maria would have it in the first place because I don't know why QLF would be collecting data that Wat and Ares would need. But when that happens, or maybe before that happens, Wat reaches the point where she's ready to try and get it to be a little less theoretical and little more tangible, and she starts trying to construct some kind of time machine." He drew back from Jana and gestured to the pages on the table. "She's a broke intern at a law office at this point, and Ares is stuck in the detention center, so she doesn't have any resources for this. So she goes to either the Teotihuacan Foundation, or the Tula Group, or both, to fund the construction. Does that sound about right so far, filly?"

"Something like that," Jana said, "I honestly do not know a lot of the details. She did not tell us anything."

"Anyway," Miguel pressed on, "since they've started the construction of the time machine, they've reached a point where it's starting to do _something_ , and they want to make sure that that something won't backfire like the transporter on any given episode of Star Trek. So they kidnap you and my kitten to test it out. Am I right?"

"…not really," Jana said.

"Damn. Am I close? Work with me, filly."

"You are close."

Miguel sat back, drinking his coffee pensively. "Were you testing _anything_ out?"

"It was less of a test and more of a maiden voyage," Jana said, looking nervously to the side as if to say, 'Is it okay if I tell him that much?'

Miguel blinked, then the realization of what she had just said sunk in and he almost spit out his coffee. (He didn't because he didn't want Franziska to kill him when she got home.) "You mean you actually - you actually _travelled through time?_ "

Jana nodded once and proceeded to tell him the whole story of what had happened the night of January 16.

* * *

 _August 6 (2001), 4:00 PM, Houzuki Discount Motel, Room No. 0010_

"So what do you think actually happened, Mr. Edgeworth?" Ray said.

Edgeworth was quiet for almost a full minute before saying, "I don't think we're looking at a double murder here."

"…murder-suicide?" Ray said. Edgeworth shook his head.

"Two separate murders," he said.

"Ziation died first?" Ray guessed. Edgeworth nodded.

"She was probably killed before Dr. Raytions woke up, and was in the refrigerator a lot longer than the police guessed."

"Who killed her, then? Aver?"

"I'm not sure. We should ask about the food that was taken out of the refrigerator."

Misty poked her head into the room. "Hello again."

"Hi, Misty," Ray chirped.

"You two were wondering about the food in the fridge?"

"Yes," Edgeworth said, "Detective, could you tell us how long it had been out?"

"Not for sure. It had reached room temperature by the time forensics got here."

"How long does that usually take?" Ray asked Edgeworth.

"Anywhere from half an hour to two hours, depending on what it is, I think."

"All of it was room temperature," Misty amended.

Edgeworth raised his eyebrows. "So it's possible that Ziation was killed an hour before Dr. Raytions had even woken up?"

"That's what it sounds like to me," Ray said.

"Interesting," Edgeworth said, and walked over to the bloodstain on the floor in the front room and stared contemplatively at the pawprints. "If Ziation was killed two hours before the police arrested Takemikazuchi, that raises some questions about Aver."

"Maybe Aver really did kill her," Ray said.

"And then someone else killed Aver?" Misty said, then added, "while he was in the middle of hiding Ziation's body?"

"Maybe he had already finished hiding it," Edgeworth pointed out. "Takemikazuchi claims he never opened the refrigerator."

"He also didn't realize that there were two bodies," Ray said, "he was surprised when we told him."

Edgeworth looked back up. "The door presents a problem."

"What's the problem with the door?" Misty said, glancing over at it. "You mean how Dr. Raytions claimed that M- Takemikazuchi opened it without a card? There weren't any signs of forced entry, by the way."

"No, we just talked with Dr. Raytions, and she thinks now that the door she heard closing was the one at room no. 0006, not this one. The door must have still been open when Takemikazuchi entered the room."

"Which means the real killer left it open?" Ray said, "since it's not like the cat could have opened it." He looked down at the tiny paw prints, then pointed out the way that they lead straight out of the room. "Mr. Edgeworth, look - there's two sets of prints here."

"So there are," Edgeworth said, looking them over, "looks like one of the seats leads out of the kitchen."

"That's where Takemikazuchi was arrested," Misty said, "one of the arresting officers said that he was carrying the cat when they burst into the room, and that it ran off while they were arresting him."

"But there's _two_ tracks out," Ray said, "did it leave the room twice?"

"There are no tracks back in," Misty observed, crouching down by them.

"Suppose the cat ran out of the room after Dr. Raytions saw it go in," Edgeworth said, "and Takemikazuchi picked it up and entered the room himself. He took it with him to the kitchen, then when he dropped it while being arrested, it ran back out."

"That explains the tracks perfectly," Misty said, pleased.

"…but Dr. Raytions didn't mention seeing Takemikazuchi picking up the cat," Ray pointed out. "She only saw him go in the room."

"Yes, but remember the timeline of her calling in the tip: she saw the cat in the hallway, went to go call in a tip, saw the cat enter the room, put the phone back, _then_ saw Takemikazuchi and went back to go get the phone," Edgeworth said.

"Ahh," Misty said, "Takemikazuchi picked up the cat while she was putting the phone down!"

"And it's so small, too," Ray said, looking at the itty-bitty paw prints and wondering what the cat itself looked like - it was probably really cute - "if he was holding it close to himself, no wonder she didn't notice it."

"Detective, did the clothes Takemikazuchi have on him at arrest indicate how he was holding the cat? I assume it had some of Aver's blood on it."

"Uh-huh," Misty said, "but you can't really prove at what point he picked up the cat."

"Can't we use the paw prints as proof?" Ray said.

"Von Karma will find a way to turn that back on us," Edgeworth said, "so we're not in the clear yet. Next I'd like to hear more about the murder weapons, Detective."

"I told you all I know yesterday," Misty said with a shrug.

"You still haven't found out where the piano wire came from?" Ray said, exasperated.

"I'm not sure that matters," Edgeworth said placatingly. "The most important thing there is that the murderer brought the piano wire in from the outside - possibly to specifically kill Ziation - yet Aver was killed with a knife from this very kitchen."

"And the cloth that was wrapped around the knife came from the kitchen, too," Misty added.

"That supports our theory that Aver killed Ziation and then was killed by someone completely different, right?" Ray said.

"That's not really our theory right now, Ray, but yes, it does."

"Maybe the killer wasn't planning on killing Aver," Misty said, "or maybe they wanted a more efficient way to kill him."

Edgeworth shook his head again. "No, something still doesn't add up."

"What?"

"The noise."

"The noise?" Ray echoed.

"We've established how thin the walls in this motel are - although you don't have to live here for five years to figure that out. If you're going to murder someone here, it would make sense to strangle them, because then they can't scream…"

"…but why would you stab someone, in that case?" Ray finished.

"Dr. Raytions didn't hear _any_ screaming, though," Misty said, "even though Aver was stabbed. He didn't scream."

"Why wouldn't he scream?" Ray said, "He wasn't stabbed in the throat, right?" Misty shook her head.

"Maybe you're right about Aver being the killer, Ray," Edgeworth said.

"…eh? Why?"

"Because that's the only reason why he wouldn't scream as he were being stabbed: he planned to survive the stabbing, and didn't want to draw anyone to the room where Ziation's body was, because then he might be implicated."

"He didn't die immediately, too," Misty mused.

"Okay!" Ray said, fists up, "Let's find how Aver would have been implicated in Ziation's death! I'm sure that'll lead us to who really killed him!"

* * *

 _August 7, 9:50 AM, District Court, Defendant's Lobby No. 2_

"You know, Mr. Edgeworth, I've been thinking."

"Mm?"

"What exactly is that cat's name?"

"He doesn't have one," Ares said flatly.

"And whose cat is it, anyway? Is it yours?" Shields said, turning towards Ares.

"…no. It's Alois'."

"That's why he wants to get it back," Edgeworth told Shields.

"Ah," Shields said. There was a lengthy pause. "I hope Mr. von Karma lets him have his cat back when this case is over."

"I hope that cat's still a kitten by the time this case is over," Edgeworth sighed.

"Well, it is moving pretty fast, Mr. Edgeworth."

Ares rolled his eyes. They had _no_ idea.

* * *

 **A/N: So Misty E and Misty-2057 are going to be your major symbols/vehicles for the conflict between the the Teotihuacan Foundation and the Tula Group. "But who are they and what do they want?" you might be wondering. Well, gee, turns out pretty much everyone is wondering the exact same thing! ;D**

 **BTW, if you're confused about the 'Dr. Raytions on the phone' timeline, remember that cellphones weren't so widespread in 2001 and re-think it. And then remember it, because it comes up again in the next chapter.**

* * *

 **Nochmals,: Again,**  
 **Unheimlich…: Scary...**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: Last chapter, guys. Be afraid.**

* * *

 _August 7 (2001), 10:00 AM, District Court, Courtroom No. 2_

"Court is now in session for the trial of Mr. Takemikazuchi."

"The prosecution is prepared, your Honor."

"The defense is ready, your Honor."

"Now, yesterday we left off on the need to hear testimony from one of the victim's fiancé," the Judge said.

"Yes," von Karma said, "Igor Mortis, take the stand."

A middle-aged, dark-haired man in an ill-fitting suit took the stand.

"Witness, name and occupation," von Karma barked.

"Igor Mortis," he said in a very slow, deep voice, "substitute teacher."

"How do students stay awake in his class?"

"Raymond…"

"Witness," von Karma was saying, "explain your relationship with one of the victims to the court."

"Ah, Agfa…" he said sadly, "we were engaged to be married…"

"…and the other victim?" von Karma said impatiently.

"A friend of Agfa's before she moved to Los Angeles… I didn't know him. Nor did I have any particular reason to want to get to know him."

"Objection," Gregory said, "we have an affidavit from yesterday's witness that Ms. Ziation was cheating on you with Cade Aver."

There was a very long pause.

"What," von Karma said flatly.

Raymond waved the affidavit around a little bit. "Th-the walls at that motel are _really_ thin."

Someone in the gallery stifled a laugh. Mortis looked nervously from side to side. "I had no idea," he huffed.

"Right," Raymond said.

"Mr. Mortis," Gregory said, "we'd like to hear about what you were doing on the day of the murders."

"Am I being accused?" Mortis said shiftily.

"No, the defense merely likes to waste the court's time," von Karma said.

"Just testify, witness," Gregory said.

"No," Mortis sniffed, "I plead the fifth." The gallery broke out in murmurs, which the Judge silenced with his gavel.

"Well," the Judge said, "if the witness is refusing to testify, what are you going to do now, Mr. Edgeworth?"

"I'd like to revisit a theory proposed by the detective yesterday," he said.

"In that case, you are dismissed, Mr. Mortis. Make sure he stays in the prosecution's lobby," the Judge added, addressing the bailiff. "Now, Mr. Edgeworth?"

Raymond helpfully read off of yesterday's transcript: "'We think that they were trying to throw off the time of death to create an alibi for themselves. The fridge was still plugged in, right? So if both of the bodies were in the fridge, the decomposition would slow down and once they were discovered, it would be hard to tell when exactly they died. The murderer probably had something that they were going to do right after the murder so they could establish that they were somewhere else during the window of time in which they could have died.'"

"I'd like to remind the court Aver had recently purchased ticket to Lithuania," Gregory said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" von Karma scoffed.

"Lithuania doesn't have an extradition treaty with the US," Gregory said.

"And?" von Karma said, even more arrogantly than before.

"And doesn't that seem suspicious to you?" Gregory said, "your Honor, the defense would like to propose an alternate theory to the prosecution's claims: Agfa Ziation was killed by Cade Aver, and an hour or so later, Cade Aver was killed by a third party."

"And your evidence for this is the fridge and the plane ticket?" the Judge said.

"And the fact that Dr. Raytions insisted that she didn't hear the murder."

"If you were being stabbed, wouldn't you scream, y-your Honor?" Raymond said.

The Judge nodded. "I most certainly would."

"But what if you had just killed someone and the corpse was in the same room?"

The Judge was silent for a moment. "Well," he said, "I'd never do something like that."

"Ridiculous," von Karma hmphed, "if you thought you were going to die-"

"Maybe he didn't think he was going to die," Gregory interrupted. "It's actually quite hard to stab someone to death, and I suspect that Aver would know that, considering Ziation was strangled."

"Circular logic," von Karma dismissed.

"Moreover…" Gregory told the court about the timeline of Raytions calling in the tip, as he had worked it out yesterday.

"It doesn't matter if Takemikazuchi was the one to open the door to the motel room or not," von Karma snapped as soon as Gregory was finished.

"It, along with the refrigerator, introduces a window of time in which Ziation could have been killed."

"So what?"

Gregory frowned. "If Aver killed Ziation, then that would account for all of the inconsistencies between the two deaths. Additionally, Ziation and Aver had a known relationship, whereas the defendant has no proven relation to either of them."

"I'm inclined to agree with the defense here," the Judge said, "but if Aver killed Ziation, who killed Aver? This is the question we should be focusing on."

"Obviously, Takemikazuchi killed Aver," von Karma said. He seemed only slightly fazed by the sudden shift from double murder to domino murders. "Witness testimony still places him at the crime scene at the estimated time of Aver's death. His fingerprints were also found at the crime scene…"

"On the refrigerator's handle," Gregory pointed out, "which, if we accept that Ziation killed Aver before being killed himself, is irrelevant."

"Regardless, he was still at the crime scene at the time of the crime - and the witness saw or heard no other people." Von Karma's smirk was victorious already.

"How did Takemikazuchi get into the room?" Raymond spoke up. "He didn't have a keycard."

Von Karma was silent. "There were no signs of forced entry, either," Gregory added, "considering the cat went into the room before he did, I'd say that the door was still open."

"Meaning that the real killer had just left," Raymond said.

Von Karma hmphed. "Or Aver let him in."

"Why would Aver let him in if he had killed Ziation and her body was in the refrigerator?" Gregory said.

"Perhaps the defendant was involved in Ziation's death after all," von Karma said with a sneer.

Gregory pulled out the autopsy report. "I'm not sure how well your timeline holds up, Mr. von Karma," he said. "Aver died not too long before the police arrived, but his death was a slow one. The defense is of the opinion that if Takemikazuchi had stabbed Aver, then Aver would still have been alive when the police got there."

"You have no way to prove that," von Karma said simply.

"What are we going to do, Mr. Edgeworth?" Raymond whispered, glancing at the defendant's box.

Gregory held one hand up to his mouth for a few moments, thinking. Logically, Aver had killed Ziation - and had planned on doing this, likely booking the motel room specifically for it - but then someone else, most likely Mortis, came in and killed Aver, mostly likely as revenge for killing Ziation; right after Mortis left, Takemikazuchi must have come in.

But there was nothing tying Mortis to the crime scene except for his relationship to Ziation. "Mr. von Karma," Gregory said, "does Mr. Mortis have an alibi?"

"No," von Karma said, crossing his arms, "neither does he have anything tying him to the crime, other than his relationship to Ms. Ziation." He really had him there…

"Was he doing _anything_ around the time of the crime?" Raymond said, exasperated, "why would he plead the fifth?"

"Yesterday afternoon evidence was uncovered that he participated in a robbery the night of the fifth." Von Karma smirked. "Close enough to an alibi, Edgeworth?"

 _If Aver were involved in the robbery as well, that would explain why Mortis showed up at his motel room_ , Gregory thought, but dismissed it. Nothing of the sort had come up in the investigation.

"I guess that explains why Mr. von Karma had him come in as a witness," Raymond muttered, "if he'd already been arrested…"

"Do you wish to levy an accusation against Igor Mortis?" the Judge said.

Gregory paused and thought for a very long time, flipping through the court record as he did so. He wasn't even entirely sure about his suspicions against Mortis - the big problem was the lack of evidence.

"…I cannot, your Honor."

The Judge nodded gravely. "Unless the defense has any last arguments, I am prepared to hand down my verdict at this time."

"Mr. Edgeworth, we have to do something!" Raymond said. Gregory looked over at the defendant's box. …Takemikazuchi looked remarkably unruffled.

"I'm afraid there's nothing we can do, Raymond," Gregory said, "if we're lucky we might be able to reinvestigate and push for a retrial, but…"

"Nothing, Edgeworth?" von Karma mocked.

"The defense rests, your Honor," Gregory said. If he were wearing his hat, he would pull it down over his eyes.

"Very well," the Judge said. "The defendant, Takemikazuchi, is hereby declared… **GUILTY**."

Was the confetti really necessary…? Manfred von Karma's ego didn't need any more boosting…

* * *

 _August 7, 11:00 AM, District Court, Defendant's Lobby No. 2_

Ares didn't even pay attention to Edgeworth (and Shields) apologizing for the guilty verdict and yammering on about making sure he got a fair sentence, or pushing for a retrial if he really was innocent, or whatever. As soon as Watson walked in the room, he knew he was good to go.

"Did you get your device back from the police?" he asked her outright.

"Er-"

E walked in behind him, a cheerful grin plastered on her face. In one arm she had the time tablet from Huitzilopotchli, and in the other arm, a cat carrier, with the kitten that had started this whole mess in it. (Alois entered the room just after her, and immediately took the latter item off her hands.)

"Now that the trial's over, some of the evidence can be released," E said.

"…as long as the more vital evidence remains on-file," Edgeworth said.

"Of course," E said brightly. She handed the tablet to Watson with 'smile, but wish her harm with your eyes' expression. "Anyway, I'm here to escort M- Takemikazuchi back to the detention center to await his sentencing trial."

"When will that be?" Edgeworth said.

E shrugged. "In the next week, I think. Anyway, you'd better go - your son's waiting for you in the hallway right outside." Edgeworth nodded, said something else to Ares that he didn't take note of, and left. Shields followed him out.

"Alright," Watson said to E, although her focus was more directed towards Huitzilopotchli's tablet, and Ares suspected he wouldn't be getting it back, "I take it this is the part where we slip off somewhere to head back to 2054 - and you head back to lambda-2051."

"I'm staying with Mr. Ares," E sniffed.

"Warum?" Alois said. E smiled at him, but didn't say anything.

"Whatever," Watson grumbled, tucking Huitzilopotchli's tablet into her lab coat, "Alois and I will head out - meet us under the overpass two blocks from the detention center, I'm sure you know the one. I'll send us back to around where and when we left from."

"Don't be off by six hours this time," Alois said dryly, then stalked out of the room, cat carrier still in hand. Watson left after him.

"Let's go, sir," E said after a moment.

"A question, first, while my half-sister's not in here," Ares said, holding up one finger.

"Yes, sir?"

"Why did you come to this timeline, and why are you staying?"

"As I said earlier, sir, I'm here to protect you, Mr. Ares, sir."

"From who or what?"

"I… I probably shouldn't tell you yet, sir. You'll know, sir, when the time comes. I'm sorry."

Ares shook his head. "I don't mind waiting for answers. …but you're not from this timeline. If you have to protect me, why not protect the me from your timeline? Alpha lambda Ares?"

E broke eye contact, looking at her feet, ashamed? "I was protecting him, sir. But I had to… he…" She swallowed hard. "Mr. Ares, we need to go, sir."

"What happened to alpha lambda Ares?"

"He died, sir. I came here to make sure it wouldn't happen again."

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 10:15 PM, Gavin Estate_

"I still can't believe… time travel," Miguel muttered to himself over his coffee.

"But now you know what happened last month," Jana said, drumming her fingers on the table nervously.

Miguel sat up suddenly. "So _that's_ what Maria was collecting information on!" he burst out.

"What?" Jana said, starting.

"I always wondered why QLF would assign her to be your legal assistant, but it all makes sense now!" Miguel said quickly, leaning forward across the kitchen table. "Especially since you and my kitten seem to be on cases together pretty often… she was _observing_ you and your brother, because you two are 'destined' time-travelers!"

"What?!" Jana said again.

"And that's the information that Ares stole from her in December!"

"Information about us?" Jana said, shaking her head slightly.

Miguel nodded. "I don't know what exactly QLF's role is in all this, but that's the only reason I can think of as to why they would send Maria after you on that. She was always writing down in her notebook, right?"

"I - thought she was taking notes on the cases we were on," Jana said.

"But she was actually taking notes on you! And that information, it - it - was exactly why Wat chose you two to drag back to 2019 last month."

"Are you not leaping to conclusions, Miguel?" Jana scoffed abruptly.

Miguel paused, then deflated. "Yeah," he said at length, "I never got to see what was in those files two months ago. QLF covered it up pretty thoroughly. Plus Maria never tells me anything…"

"What kind of circular logic is this," Jana muttered to herself, slumping over the table and holding her head in one hand. "Suppose you are right and QLF really was having Maria F… collect information on us." She frowned. "If that was what Clay Justice attacked her in order to steal, and that information made its way to Watson Justice, then that would be exactly why she chose us for her time travel trips. And yet, if Watson Justice had never done that in the first place, there would have been no reason for QLF to want to collect information on us."

"I suppose that's exactly what's to be expected with time travel," Miguel said, taking a sip of his coffee. "Have either of you talked to Maria since this started?"

"No."

"Hmm." Miguel swilled his coffee in thought. "I hear she's going back to work soon, and it kind of sounds as though she'll be picking up where she left off…"

"So QLF does not know that the time traveling has started?"

"I'm not sure. But if Maria doesn't know about it already, that probably means that QLF doesn't either. And if they don't know…"

"Do not tell them," Jana finished. Miguel nodded.

"It's not like Maria can't be trusted, but I'm pretty sure that whoever's been giving her orders at QLF can't. Also, if QLF has connections to the Tula Group or the Teotihuacan Foundation…"

"They cannot be trusted either?" Jana said.

"If Wat's tied to the Tula Group, and they seem to share a lot of members with the Teotihuacan Foundation," Miguel said, tapping the photo titled 'Teotihuacan Foundation: known members (December 2053)', "we can't really trust either of them."

"That is obvious," Jana scoffed, "you should not trust any group that you cannot find concrete evidence of existing in the first place."

"The mafia's not registered with the state, either," Miguel pointed out, then picked up the photo he had just been tapping and staring at it. "…time travel, though, filly. I thought it was related, but only in a mad-scientist's-failed-experiments way."

"I can show you the time door, if you like," Jana said.

"What, really?"

"Yes, it should be there, although I do not know for how much longer. It is in the backyard." She got up, scraping her chair against the floor. "Are you coming?" she demanded. Now that she had something definite to show Miguel, she felt more in control of the situation or something, and as such had returned to her imperious ways.

 _Now that's the filly I know_ , Miguel smiled to himself, and followed her out.

"Woah," he said, upon seeing the flickering, orange-and-blue slab of luminous fog… or whatever it was. 'Door' was a good name to call it, since it was roughly the size and shape of a standard interior door.

"It leads to August 5, 2001," Jana said.

"Seriously?" He walked closer to it, inspecting it. He was tempted to put his hand in it, and even reached out to do so, but stopped himself. Jana noticed him doing this, and walked up to it and stuck her hand through, herself. It didn't come out the other side of the door.

"It feels warm," she said, "and it tingles when you put your body through it, but other than that, it is not anything extreme."

"Huh." And here Miguel had thought that time travel would be at _least_ worse than flying on an airplane.

Jana pulled her hand back and showed it to Miguel, who pulled her glove off and carefully inspected her fingers. (He pretended not to notice her blushing at this.) "You look fine," he said.

"As far as I know, time travel does not have any ill effects."

"Oh, I'm sure it does," Miguel said seriously, letting go of her hand and giving her back her glove. "Probably stuff that you'd have to do a lot of time travel to notice."

"In that case, I have no plans of noticing it."

"What, did you _plan_ on visiting 2001 tonight?"

Jana shook her head. "It was a coincidence…" She sighed and looked at the door. "Why, Miguel? Why time travel?"

Miguel blinked at her sudden question. "You tell me," he said.

"I do not really know anything. I just happened to get wrapped up in this."

"But you remember what Ares said at my kitten's trial?"

Jana closed her eyes. "He wanted to use time travel to kill Detective Ema Skye before Apollo Justice divorced his mother."

"Something like that."

"So why did Watson Justice create the time travel device in the first place, if that were the goal?"

Silence fell over the backyard.

* * *

 _August 7 (2001), 11:40 AM, Los Angeles, Kazuma Overpass_

 _This wasn't as bad as last time_ , Alois told himself tiredly, _I only spent two days stuck in the past with Wat, instead of three. Und I didn't really have to do anything since we were staying at a motel this time instead of Onkel Wright's office. Und Jana wasn't here_. Actually, that last one might not have necessarily made things more pleasant for Alois, strictly speaking.

Hey, at least he got his cat back.

Still had no idea what to name it, though.

Dimly mulling it over, he watched as Watson entered 14022054CE[ENTER]LNαα[ENTER] into the time tablet she had appropriated from Ares. A door coruscated into existence.

"Time to go home," Alois murmured into the cat carrier. The still-unnamed kitten meowed back at him happily.

"You're leaving a few questions unanswered, aren't you?" a slightly amused voice said from a bit away. For a second Alois thought it was Misty E, but then realized that the tone was all wrong and turned around. As expected, Misty-2057 had appeared out of nowhere. (Misty E was silently standing between Misty-2057 and Ares.)

"I don't really care about what was going on with this case," Ares said, probably rolling his eyes under his sunglasses.

"I didn't mean about the case."

"I'm curious to know the outcome of the case," Alois piped up.

Misty-2057 glanced at him - Alois noted that he was literally the only one here that she didn't look at with contempt. "'Takemikazuchi' and the rookie detective who helped prosecute him - poorly - were forgotten by the time they should have reached the detention center. No one looked at the records for the trial for another sixty years, so it was forgotten about too… just another victory under Manfred von Karma's belt. No one cared about the details."

"But what about the real killer?" Alois said, frowning and glancing at Ares. Surely he didn't… there would have been no point…

"About a month from now, Igor Mortis will kill himself and confess to the murder of Cade Aver in his suicide note. He'll say that he knew that Agfa Ziation was cheating on him, and that Aver had killed her because she had told her fiancé about her affair and they were going to break up - I suppose Aver must have been thinking, 'If I can't have her, no one can.' Ziation went to the motel room that day to see Aver for the last time, and when she didn't return after an hour, Mortis followed her there. When he saw what Aver had done, he killed him and slipped out. But he couldn't take the guilt in the end…"

"That's nice," Watson yawned. "You'd think someone would look up that John Doe they sent to prison after the suicide."

"Manfred von Karma had the note destroyed as soon as it came to his attention."

"Natürlich," Alois mumbled.

"I'm more interested in why Huitzilopotchli sent me here," Ares said.

"Can't help you there," Misty-2057 replied.

"Was there a point to this?" Watson said, strained.

"Don't ask me, ask Huitzilopotchli."

"I don't know him," Watson snapped.

"I don't either."

Misty-2057 gave a tight-lipped smile to both of them. "Oh, don't worry," she said, "you'll both know him soon enough. Quite… _intimately_ , too."

 _Is "ominous foreshadowing" her job description or something?_ Alois wondered. If the mysterious Tula Group turned out to be a bunch of wackos, he honestly wouldn't surprised.

"Whatever," Watson grumbled, "go back to your own time. You're not needed here."

"Of course, _ma'am_ ," Misty-2057 said with a very Uncle Miles-esque sneer, and stalked off.

"What's her problem?" Misty E said.

 _Maybe I'll figure it out before you do_ , Alois thought, _with all this new information you've let me listen in on…_ and with a smile he stepped through the time door.

* * *

 _February 14 (2054), 10:25 PM, Gavin Estate, Garden_

"Alois!"

"Kitten!"

"Jana! Miguel!" Alois held up the cat carrier, smiling brightly, and quickly walked over to his sister and best friend. "I got him back unharmed!" He lowered his voice as Ares and Misty E stepped through the door behind him. "I'll explain everything in just a bit. Jana, _how much did you tell Miguel?_ " (He said the last part in German.)

"Alles," Jana whispered back. Alois quickly shot Miguel a 'let me do the talking' look and turned around just as Watson stepped through the door.

"Oh," she said, blinking. "Miguel. Again?"

"I don't just give up on a case," Miguel said with a strained smile.

Watson narrowed her eyes. "How much do you know?"

Miguel shrugged with a forced casualness that even Watson probably picked up on. "Not much, obviously. What is Ares doing out of the psychiatric ward?" His voice was hard. "Who's that chick with him?"

"My bodyguard," Ares said with a smirk. "Don't worry - next time we go time traveling, you'll forget all about her, so don't worry."

"Actually, we might be able to change my base year from alpha lambda-2051 to alpha alpha-2054, sir," Misty E said quietly. Ares just tilted his head slightly.

"Oh, by the way," Alois said loudly before Miguel and Watson's stare-off escalated into something that might end badly for Miguel, "I've decided on a new name for mein Kätzchen."

"Really?" Jana said.

Alois nodded. "Teiwaz."

"Teiwaz?" everyone else said at the same time. Alois nodded, smiling innocently.

"A Germanic war god. I figured that I should name him after Ares, since it he _was_ the one who went back into the past to rescue him, after all." _Even though he was_ also _the one who opened the door he slipped through in the first place…_ "Ich meine, war gods are kind of Ares' thing, aren't they?"

There were a few murmurs of "That sounds about right" and "nice name" in the little group. Alois continued smiling innocently, wondering how much exactly one needed to know before one knew too much.

"You didn't tell me you were going to rename him, kitten," Miguel said, sounding half-amused for what was probably the first time all night, but then he immediately turned his attention back to Watson. "You'd better go. And take your insane half-brother and his mook with you." His voice was cold and hard again.

"Alright, alright," Watson said, deactivating the time door. "Just so you know, I had nothing to do with this, and-"

"And you're going to leave the von Karma-Gavins alone in the future, right?" Miguel snarled.

"And _you're_ going to forget your stupid investigation?" Watson snarled right back.

Miguel laughed once. "Make me."

Watson narrowed her eyes. "You want to play hardball? Fine then." She tugged at the lapels of her lab coat irritably, still glaring. "You keep sticking your coffee cup where it doesn't belong, Miguel, and that dirty little secret of yours might not be so _secret_ anymore." She marched off, gesturing to Ares and Misty E to follower as she did (which they did), and clambered over the fence. Thirty seconds later, Alois, Jana, and Miguel were alone in the garden.

"…dirty little secret?" Jana scoffed, tilting her head arrogantly. "What a horrible bluff. As if we all could not see right through that!"

Alois didn't say anything, just glanced at Miguel, who wasn't say anything either. Pale face, wide eyes, trembling lips... Alois sighed slightly. _I wouldn't say that, Jana…_

* * *

 **"Igor Mortis" is a pun on algor mortis, the change in body temperature after death. (Airey, did you name all your one-off characters after forensic terms? What? Why would I do that?)**

 **P.S.: Lithuania signed an extradition treaty with the US in 2003. Also, if you're surprised by the guilty verdict, remember that Manfred friggin' von Karma is prosecuting and I wasn't about to retcon half the series, even with the excuse of "everyone would forget about it anyway because time travel!" Nah, son, that would have made way too big of an impression on MvK's subconscious and he would have killed Gregory a few months early. And considering pretty much everything can be traced back to DL-6 since it's the major starting point for the entire AA series, that would be a Very Big Deal.**

 **Anyway, that's the end of Cool Cat Turnabout. Thanks to everyone who has or will review, fav, or follow. - So where are we now, as a series? Traveling between alternate timelines is totally a thing, Ares is crazy, Wat might just be crazier, Miguel has a terrible secret, and Alois just dropped a hint so big it practically qualified as a spoiler. I will start work on the next remarkably unsubtle Janaverse fic immediately. I'm not sure what it'll be called yet... but it won't involve actual time travel and will probably take place in Kurain Village. Look forward to it.**

 **(Also, if you want more next-gen AU and less sci-fi, keep an eye out for a oneshot titled "Ivy Blues".)**

* * *

 **Warum?: Why?**  
 **Natürlich: Naturally/Of course**  
 **Alles: Everything**  
 **Ich meine,: I mean,**


End file.
